Government shutdown, national emergency, border wall; Trump walks out of meeting

What a farce! . . .  created solely by Donald Trump.

Karl Marx is credited with the saying:   "The world repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce."

Donald Trump is turning that around.   Up until now, it's been a farce;  but beginning Friday, it will become a tragedy for all those federal workers who won't get their paychecks, who may lose their homes, their cars, their credit . . . for not paying their bills.   It never had to come to this.

Months ago, President Trump called congressional leaders together to the Oval Office and told them he wanted a bill that would fund national security and also set up a protection for the DACA kids to be able to stay permanently in the U.S.

The legislative leaders dutifully came back with a bipartisan bill that did what he asked -- and Trump refused to approve it.      In another go at a bipartisan solution, just before Christmas, the Senate passed a bipartisan bill by voice vote -- meaning unanimous, without dissent.

But the House, still under Republican control, refused to take it up.   Since the Democrats took charge last week, they have tried to revive that bill;   but now Mitch McConnell says he won't bring up a bill in the Senate that the president won't sign.

So now we have the government shut down and nearing the end of the third week of limited services and no pay for certain workers.

According to Rachel Maddox's theory, President Trump realized that he had not been at the center of the news cycle for a few days;  so he announced that he would be addressing the American people from the Oval Office -- amid dire warnings that he might claim emergency powers that would allow him to declare a national emergency and mobilize the Army to build his wall.   That should put him back in the spotlight.

Basically, Rachel is suggesting that it was a stunt;  that Trump doesn't really want a settlement;  he wants to keep the issue alive for the political gain he gets.  It didn't work, first because of the most inept reading of his speech.

One thing that's been causing him to lose the PR battle is that even Republican journalists have begun fact-checking Trump's lies -- and speaking about it.  [See ShrinkRap Monday, Jan. 7th]   Most everything that he says to justify the "crisis at the southern border" is based on lies.

Here's are some facts and other thoughts:
1.   The number of non-citizens coming into the US across the southern border has been declining for the past decade or more.    Trump claims that we're being over-run, that hordes are coming.    He even has Mike Pence and Kirstjen Nielsen talking about 3,000 t0 4,000 terrorists or suspected terrorists apprehended there.    In fact, fact-checkers say there have been a total of 6 in the first half of 2018.

2.   He claims that there is a "pipeline" of drugs coming across the border.   That is totally false.   More drugs come across the border with Canada than with Mexico;  and those that do come through the normal checkpoints;   they're just concealed.   A wall won't help that.

3.   Trump cites horror stories of brutal murders committed by those coming from the countries to our south.   There have been a few notorious actual murders.   But statistics show that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes of all sorts than native-born citizens.   That's been true for a long time, it is well-established truth, and Trump and his minions are simply lying to make people fearful of immigrants.

4.  Trump has given up saying that Mexico will pay directly for the cost of the wall.  He's now saying that they will pay it "indirectly" through the great trade deal that only he was able to work out with Mexico.    He doesn't explain, however, how this works.   U.S.taxpayers would have to pay for the wall but then would get the money back by increased profits from trade deals with Mexican corporations?    But how does the extra money get from the corporations' increased profits to pay back the U.S. taxpayers?   Huh?   Yes, corporations will pay taxes on the increased profits, but how does that benefit the average tax paying citizen?

5.   Trump read the speech prepared for him.    He has a problem about speeches.  If he free-wheels it, he says wild and crazy things.    When he needs to be serious, he has a script-writer;  but then it doesn't sound like him.   Trump just doesn't talk like that, so he sounds insincere and inauthentic when he reads in an affectless monotone:   "It touches our hearts and touches our souls."

6.  Besides, he said nothing new.   All that was different was that, stung by recent fact-checkers, he omitted his claims that we need a wall to keep out terrorists.   He didn't mention terrorists at all;   now it's common criminals, rapists and murders.  He still dangled the emergency powers thing, but he didn't invoke it.   If you listened carefully to what reporters asked him the next day, he couldn't really say what would have to change to make him invoke the emergency powers -- except if he couldn't get the Democrats to do what he wanted.   In other words, it's not the conditions at the border, but the conditions of the negotiations.   He simply using this threat, like he's using the shutdown -- as a bargaining chip.

7.  Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer gave a response to his speech -- sounding both fact-based and compassionate and . . . well, like themselves.   They pointed out that there is a crisis at the border;  it's a humanitarian crisis created by Trump's own policies of separating children from their parents and not providing for the people's needs.

  Pelosi had the best line of the evening when she said:

"The symbol of America should be the Statue of Liberty, not a wall."

*     *     *

And then there was the planned meeting between Trump and the congressional leaders Wednesday afternoon.    Trump walked out when Pelosi still refused to promise to give him the money to pay for his "wall or border security."    There's also a leak circulating about a phone call between Trump and the president of Mexico in which Trump tells him that he realizes he's made a big mistake and doesn't know how to get out of it -- the mistake being his promise to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it.  It's unclear whether the Mexican president was sympathetic;  in any case, he did not offer to bail him out by paying.

Ralph